


Two Magicians

by Teawithmagician



Series: Jedi-Knight Rishka [2]
Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: AU, Abusive Parents, Alternative Prequel, Angst, Drama, Drama & Romance, F/M, Family Drama, First Love, Het, Pureblood Culture, Pureblood Sith Jedi, Renegade Sith, Revan Heresy, Revanchism, Slavery, Twi'leks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 03:57:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5613139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teawithmagician/pseuds/Teawithmagician
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was the difference between the Sith and the Jedi Rishka used to know. This difference flew in her blood so pure it should have been mountain water, but there weren't mountains on Korriban though there was water enough on Dromund Kaas. There was the difference Rishka used to know and then had forgotten. She had forgotten it when she fell in love with a slave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Magicians

**Author's Note:**

> This is novelization of my Sith Inquisitor and Jedi Knight storyline. Total AU where mentioned Revan is obligatory a woman, her attacking the Emperor was backed by several other Sith Lords excepting Scourge, and Revan’s Heresy got suspiciously popular at some level at the Empire of the period.

_Bide, lady, bide  
For there's nowhere you can hide._

There was the difference between the Sith and the Jedi Rishka used to know. This difference flew in her blood so pure it should had been mountain water, but there weren't mountains on Korriban, though there was water enough on Dromund Kaas. There was the difference Rishka used to know and then had forgotten. She had forgotten it when she fell in love with a slave.

His name was Valen, he was Twi'lek, the butler. He opened the doors, closed the doors, took cloaks and capes of the guests, soaking with endless Kass City rain. It was the rain Rishka used to listen to in the garden when she was just a dreamy redskin child, but she was a child, it was always accompanied Valen's muffled sobs. 

Valen was a little scrawny boy with long sluggish lekku, long thin nose, but beautiful blue eyes. He felt lonely in the manor as the cook disliked him and the rest of the servants found him useless, so he used to cry and complaint where nobody could hear him, but Rishka did.

Rishka used to calm Valen down under the maliva bushes till he cried himself out in her hands, wobbling. Fifteen years later it was Valen's look that made women turn round and look at him in respond. He became the most handsome man Rishka ever saw, and that man smiled Rishka when he saw her, smiled and winked her if her mother wasn't watching them, and she wasn't as Sith Ladies normally had more things to care about without butlers and winks.

Rishka's mother also didn't know that Valen brought Rishka cakes upstairs, to the Meditation Hall, where Rishka was supposed to study alone, preparing herself for her uncle's arrival. Rishka's uncle was a Sith Lord, and she was supposed to be his pupil (as for her mother, matriach of the Bloodline, teaching her own daughter was a nuisance – normally Pureblood children were taught by their relatives), as Pureblood Sith preferred not to send their offsprings to Korriban – it was highly improper to confide the training of the heirs of the noble Bloodlines to such a common educational institute.

Rishka was born “with the Blessing of the Dark Side”, like her forefathers and foremothers before her, but becoming a Sith Sorceress appeared extremely hard for her. Rishka convinced herself she should learn, but instead of clearing her mind and accepting the Power, which led to the Victory, which led to the Freedom, through which the Chains were Broken... Stop, was that right consequence?

Rishka didn't like Sith Sorcery, even less she liked the Path of the Warrior, but she was clever enough (rarely) not to share her thoughts and feelings with her mother. There was something about Dark Side Rishka couldn't accept and it scared her. She settled herself down with her dislike of the Light Side's indifference, but still she didn't feel like a Sith and was afraid that she might never feel the true power her mother talked of.

Rishka was unhappy, and Valen with his sweets, fingers covered with sugar powder (in the end, he become friends with manor cook and ate all the tasty things he wanted, compensating for his childish everlasting hunger), with all his brief smiles and silly yet funny jokes Valen reserved for the ones he really wanted to like him entertained her. 

They sat on the floor, in the corner under the high and long stained window, their backs to the relics of the Dark Side Rishka's Bloodline collected for thousands of years: they were mostly masks, ancient broken swords in glass showcases and armor of the Lords and Ladies of the past on iron mannequins. While speaking, Valen used to occasionally touch Rishka's hand while Rishka pretended she didn't notice that.

Valen might be the most handsome slave on Dromund Kaas, but with Rishka he remembered the crying boy under the maliva bush, and it made him take the risks as touching his mistress' daughter hand was certain death for the slave. For Rishka, Valen was a friend she was never allowed to have, but still secretly kept, and the landing stone of her disobedience: there was always a soft spot for him in her heart, so it grew, taking more and more Rishka to leave more and more Valen.

They were ought to go further, so they went. It all started with tender little kisses, with Valen caressing Rishka's face, from cuddling in the distant passages and dark corners while there were nobody around. Rishka used to hide them in the Force till one moment she realized Valen didn't need it: if he wanted, he hid in the Force by himself, not fully understanding what he was doing, but pretty happy he could just disappear for an hour or a half if he wanted to.

“That must be the Force,” said Rishka, when she examined Valen with her eyes closed, all her senses opened, and suddenly found something in him she never really noticed before. “Did my mother know that?”

“Nobody will know. It only happens when I want to, and I don't know how,” answered Valen boldly. Black tattoos covered his face, making it look like a mask of a demon. Rishka didn't know if he was tattooed in his tribe or by the slavers when Valen appeared in the Dromund-Kaas manor, he already looked like this. 

“If you are strong with the Force, you can become a Sith,” proceeded Rishka excitedly. Her mother told her that Sith didn't have friends, only allies. Even with another Sith they could only cooperate to the very moment they would be able to compete, but Rishka didn't feel like competing Valen.

Valen was so full of live, so eager to see the world outside the manor that even his ostentatious cynicism was unable to conceal it. Rishka knew that as a future Sith she shouldn't be eager to help anyone, especially a nameless, tribeless salve, not gaining a benefit, but it just didn't work out with her – she wanted to set Valen free even more when she wanted to be free of her mother's authority herself. 

It might be a wonderful future for them two, living an adventurous life on faraway planets not as mistress and slave, but as Sith Lady and Lord, though the concept of becoming a Sith Lady still disturbed Rishka. While she and Valen were sitting under the maliva bush and talking about their plans, she confessed she had never felt like being a proper Sith. It was a bad idea, but when Rishka started to talk about it, she just couldn't stop.

“So you don't want to become a Sith,” Valen summed up. “What do you want when – to become a Jedi?”

“Of course not!” Rishka felt indignation rising. Jedi were weak, they were the Abomination of the Force, they whole understanding of its Nature was a mistake... Or wasn't, said nasty little voice in Rishka's head as Rishka froze, knocked down by its sound.

Rishka felt her skin losing it's glowing red hue, going pale rose like maliva flowers over her head. The sound of music and laughter was heard from behind the hedge maze, environing the maliva pavilion, as Rishka's mother was giving a banquette for the people she found useful that night. Valen did his job as a butler, briefed the waiters and slipped out of the balcony door to climb down the overgrown wall and jump into the garden, where Rishka already waited for him in her training rope as while waiting she pretended to meditate – the only excuse she had to avoid the banquette. 

The hedge maze and the lush bushes hid Valen and Rishka from Rishka's mother eyes, letting them avoid dangerous curiosity of her guests. When Rishka was a child, maze seemed to her neverending, she was only able to find a way out of it using the Force as her seventh sense, so mother pushed Rishka into the maze and told her to search, as Rishka was expected to get home at least for supper.

Now the hedge maze was waist high to the eighteen years old Rishka, still concealing Rishka's presence only when she sat down. Valen hold Rishka's hand and kissed it from time to time, as though making sure it was Rishka's hand and the whole Rishka was there, sitting by his side. Unfortunately, it couldn't keep Rishka from falling apart, as the waist high hedge wouldn't put her out of sight if she would stand up full-length

“So if you don't want to be either a Sith or a Jedi, you just need to... I don't know,” chattered Valen, paying no attention at Rishka's pale face and frozen look. “Couldn't you just, I don't know – I mean, if you don't like the Code and the rest there must be another Sith who despite it. You just need to find what they wrote or recorded about it, so maybe it'd help.”

“And if I don't find it?” asked Rishka slowly, crushed by the balance Valen struck so easily. She suddenly realized never really wanted to become a Sith and never was able to confess it. Becoming a Jedi was just an alternative her mind held for so long in its darkest closet, never letting it out before the day Valen talked about it. It never was a real alternative, but if being a Sith was impossible, when – when what was possible?

Rishka wanted to scream. She felt so weak, so helpless, so disgusting and pitiful. She covered her face on Valen's chest, still not letting herself to cry out loud not to drive the attention of the guests. Valen's jacket smelled with caramel and comfits he offered Imperial military and high-ranked functionals hour before, but the smell of his body was even better.

Valen's smell was fair, and fresh, and pleasant; even his sweat scented thrillingly healthy. Valen was the embodiment of lust life, and it inspired Rishka. He was a slave, his position in the Empire was even lower than some Lords and Ladies' pets, but still he lived his own life, and this life could have been taken from him only with his breath.

“I love you,” whispered Rishka, her eyes full of tears itching like full of sand.

Valen moaned quietly, his body rigid and numb like wood. Rishka lifted up her face, and Valen squeezed her tight, holding her, kissing her, stirring up her hair like insane.

“What are you doing?” surprised Rishka, not knowing should she kiss him back or defend herself.

“You just don't understand,” Valen kept still for a moment, as though he'd been thinking of something he decided to do – or to do not. “You just don't understand what do you mean to me, Rishka.”

“What do I mean then?” asked Rishka, slightly confused. She was confused twice by she couldn't stand Valen telling her such things without blushing, and she couldn't stand it like her mother's daughter, haughtily and with slight contempt.

“Everything. You are my mistress' daughter...” Yes, the mother: he should had talked about her.

“That doesn't matter,” protested Rishka, perfectly knowing it did. What even made her telling such strange things, thinking such strange thoughts? She and Valen were not the same, because it was him who was a slave. But something in Rishka desperately longed for they were, and it begged, and it rose against the indifference: a little feature a parsec wide making her object, wanting her to hear the truth.

Valen's mind changed quickly like his mood. The Force whirled in him, Rishka felt like she could hear its wild howling by putting her ear to Valen's chest. “No! Don't. Please, let me speak...” he begged sweetly, but Rishka resented, “What do you mean 'let you'? I kissed you, I let you touched me, what a permission do you need of me?..”

Rishka resented more, but Valen closed her mouth with her hand, tasting with sugar powder, and murmured into her ear with his soft dry lips, “Please, stop that bleeding shouting! You don't want your mother to see us together, don't you, my mistress?”

Rishka bit Valen's hand lightly so he had to draw it back, and backed up, suspiciously examining Valen's face, full of emotions she didn't distinguish. What Valen felt was always like ripple on the surface of the lake, noticeable enough to draw attention, but not enough perceptible to understand that it was caused by and even the Force didn't help Rishka to discern them.

“I... I guess, I do,” she said in the end, and Valen smiled with the corners of his lips. “I mean, proceed. We'll be quiet this time.”

“That's good. That's nice. That's sweet. The thing is not that you kissed me, my lady. I kissed ladies before, but it was... it all was... I am exotic, you see? I am handsome. They... they were making the hints I understood. But I was nothing to them, Rishka, a dust in their steps. I was nothing even if I kissed...” he started amply.

“You kissed another women?” Rishka noticed how her mother's female visitors gazed at Valen and how he acted back, giving their cloaks in the most exquisite manner, including slight touching the fingers and exchanging knowing smiles. But to notice that wasn't exactly the same with being told the truth to the face.

“Of course, I do,” Valen seemed surprised. “Didn't you know that? Everybody knew... I am a slave, I'd better not to argue with mistress' ms' and mrs'. But you – you are not them. You – are you. I bleedin' fell in love with you when we were kids, when you were came to me when nobody did. I love you, Rishka, I would do anything for you, but I never... You can't even imagine that!” he suddenly swallowed the last words with a tensed grin. “So. You think I'm making a fool of myself?”

“No,” Rishka shook her head. Valen seemed so vulnerable to her in that moment. Her heart was in Rishka's hands and she was never said what to do with the heart given to you gladly, not the one torn out of your enemy's chest. Should she squish it and smash, or should she give it back to Valen and just walk away? His heart wouldn't help her to accept the Sith Code, the only thing she should be really concerned about.

“What are you thinking about, my love?” asked Valen tenderly. Rishka heard the crickets in the deepest part of the garden, not yet disturbed with the sound of music and light coming from the glazed gallery, where the party moved with the time being.

“I think,” Rishka started, trying to pull herself together as thoughts and feelings overflown her, “of what I should do. Of what a Sith should do now.”

“What should do a Sith when?” Valen kissed Rishka's forehead. He cooed with her like talking to a child and Rishka, to her surprise, found this manner sweet and pleasant for her nerves.

“Sith shouldn't accept your love. Sith should destroy it with no regret or make use of it,” answered Rishka, avoiding looking Valen into the eyes for she was afraid they would weaken her more.

“Ah. I see. And what are you going to do?” Valen's lips startled and Rishka shaped them with her thumb, not feeling either her fingers or Valen's smooth skin.

“If I destroy you as I should I will respect myself as a Sith,” Rishka finally raised her eyes to Valen, giving in for what took over her. “If I don't... If I don't destroy you, I will prove myself I am no good as a Sith, but I will... We will be together. Do you think it is worth it?”

“Every second I do. And you?”

“Yes,” Rishka's voice cracked, but she made a little cough and repeated. “Well, yes. Without 'well' actually. I know it will, I believe it must.”

“I don't give a damn who you are,” a wild smile blossomed on Valen's lips as he sprang up on his feet like a wound-up toy. Rishka knew they talked for too long that evening and both needed to go, but she didn't want to part. “Sith or not, if they think you weak – so when they'll have to get rid of me first to offend you that easily, ugly pricks.”

“Don't get yourself killed,” warned Rishka, getting up as Valen gave her his hand. They walked on grass covered with night dew in the direction of the hedge maze, covered with darkness which was thick enough to walk the garden unnoticed. “It'll be a very Valen-less life if you are gone, and I really don't want live it alone.”

“So you needn't,” agreed Valen and kissed Rishka, snuggling her before leaving. Rishka felt the slight disturbance, but said nothing for she wasn't sure she was just nervous or something had gone wrong. In that very moment the projectors in the garden lit, as the party decided to move to the fresh air, but before Rishka's mother wanted to show the guests her pavilion and hedge maze to make sure they never saw things being arranged with such taste in other Lords and Ladies' manors.

Rishka's mother, Lady Durga, the matriarch of the Bloodline, needn't explanation for what she saw from the balcony – just like the guests, who became the witnesses of her daughter's disgrace. Rishka froze as Lady Durga picked up her skirts and in one quick Force jump appeared standing on the garden path, shelled out with pebbles. She outstretched her hand as her Mandalorian bodyguard approached on his jetpack. Rishka waited to see a lightsaber put into her hand, but it was not.

Lady Durga's bodyguard gave her the electric lash, which was one the weapons her bodyguards were instructed to always carry with the. The lash wasn't the same thing with the lightsaber, but it was a lethal weapon in the hands of s skillful executioner, and Lady Durga had an outstanding taste to tortures and torments. She took the lash and rose it against her head in one shining, crackling move as the electricity run down the flexible blocks, and the whole that terror was going to rush on Valen's defenseless body.

In Lady Durga's eyes Valen was guilty in the very moment he decided he was allowed to stood that close to Rishka. He was sentenced when he assumed for the first time that he could be kissed by Rishka and needn't cut his lips for befouling her fair skin by the touch of a slave. 

Understanding was quick while Lady Durga's movement was lazy and slow as though underwater. The Force froze the time and Rishka have it enough to decide what she had to do. She pushed Valen aside as the lash slid to his face and resisted it with her crossed arms, catching the crackling hit by her own naked skin instead by Valen's face.

Rishka might have doubted her abilities, but she was trained and she could survive it, and Valen – Valen wouldn't. Though he had some skills, his reaction was slower, and if he was hit by an electric lash in Lady Durga's hand from such a close distance, it would have ripped the skin from his face. Rishka would bet her mother would find it amusing, the guests sure to be applauding her craftsmanship.

Taking the electronic blow was shockingly rural, the feeling quickly ran through Rishka's body, filling her with screaming pain, but she kept silent and mute as she needed to concentrate. She had the possibility to redirect a part of the energy into the ground, blocking the stream and making it come through her safely, but there was another part of it she caught, and – Force, it hurt so much that turned Rishka upside down on the inside.

Her mother was in fury she missed, Rishka sensed the Force making the dark cocoon over her body. Lady Durga threw her arm forward, her fingernails crackling with violet and dark yellow sparks. This time, it was a Sith Lightning and it was aiming into Valen's chest. It was no possibility for Valen avoid it and for Rishka to protect him. But there was no need for protection, as Valen caught the lightning into his palm and threw it away like Sith Warriors used to do with blaster fire, his hand slightly smoking.

“Don't even dare to touch her!” He groaned with pain and anger, standing before Rishka who crawled on the ground. Rishka grabbed Valen's clothing, darkness before her eyes. She used all her resources to resist the electricity, it took her time to understand that Valen tried to protect her with the Force and succeeded, and now he was making a Force blister that hid them in its soring energy. 

Rishka tried to help him with all that she could, though she could little, but Valen seemed to be charging her with his power. Rishka never felt anything like that, and she could only wonder how Valen learned it. There was a moment of unity while the Force flew through Rishka and Valen together, and every breath they took was of one creature with two bodies, forever merged with the same power. 

Concealed by Force, Valen helped Rishka get up and took her to the wild part of the garden there Rishka's mother kept the old training grounds, where her elder son, Rishka's brother, used to practice. Valen and Rishka pressed they backs to the garden wall, heard akk dogs' snarling in the distance and the voices of the guards scouring the glasshouse. Valen examined Rishka's scorched hands, kissing the skin where it wasn't burned and didn't hurt.

“Is it safe now? The dogs can track through the Force,” warned Rishka, suffering from pain but still alerted.

“No. We are like... It's like we are not even here,” mumbled Valen, still looking at Rishka's hands. “I don't know why it works like that. Maybe it doesn't, but I don't care. Run away with me, Rishka!” he besought. 

“I can't,” Rishka leaned her back on the garden wall. “It will only be worse.”

“What can be worse? This Sith bitch hates you as well as me,” argued Valen, but Rishka disagreed, pressing her hands to her chest as though it would cease the pain, but it only made it worse. “I'm the heir, I can't just run and that's all. She'll do nothing to me, I'm everything she is proud of, she will never hurt me...”

“She hit you with electricity twice,” Valen resented. He still didn't understand, didn't he, Rishka asked herself, glancing at his face. Shadows gathered, and the dark lines, forming patterns of precise tattoos on Valen's face became clearer, as the red spots of his skin came out menacingly. Valen looked like wearing Sith mask, and this mask was now expressing malice and anger.

“She wasn't hitting me,” Rishka breathed out, cradling her injured arms. “She was aiming at you.”

“At me?” Valen looked at Rishka uncomprehendingly. “But she...”

“Of course,” Rishka cut him, irritated with his slow thinking. “She would never ever hit me, but if she hit you – she would cripple you or kill you. I took the hit to protect you, as you weren't prepared...”

“I am prepared even better than you and your dear mother think,” snapped Valen. “They taught you and I listened, you've trained and I looked. I may not be as skillful as she is, but I'm no worse than you – you saw it by your own eyes!”

“But you told me you only used the Force accidentally...” this time Rishka was uncomprehendingly peering at Valen, and he responded with a vile smile, “M'lady, you are truly no Sith. I didn't tell you the truth, but should I? And, if you were me, would you?..”

“I guess... I guess, I would,” Rishka answered slowly and carefully, not losing the sight of Valen's face. She wasn't sure he was exactly the same twi'lek she talked under the blossoming maliva, she wasn't sure in anything Valen ever told her. So, he lied about the Force, he lied a lot, and he was going to lie much even further if they wasn't seen together and Lady Durga didn't decide to punish him. 

Valen felt something, and his traits smoothed slowly. “Now you think me a liar, don't you?”

“I don't think,” Rishka answered sharply, but still not sharp enough to wound Valen as he met her indignation naturally easy, as others met rain or storm. “I know you are. I confessed you in things I would never say to anyone, and you – you told me nothing. You might not be a Sith one day, you are already a Sith, because you are cunning and you lie, and you make use of everyone and everything in your way.”

“Is it really changing the price of the fish?” Valen interrupted Rishka briefly, and as she sat down on the grass, tired of standing still, he squatted before her, his bright blue eyes all the time before her. “You were born with a lightsaber in your hands, with all he finery of your Bloodline on, and I survived as I could. If I didn't learn, I wasn't able to protect you, m'love, then I would be of no use, wouldn't I? Now I am ready, I can protect you from anyone and hide you anywhere. Let's run away from here, I know a smuggler in city spaceport. He would get us any way we want, where we can be free and live free forever.”

Akk dogs' gnarling approached, Rishka heard them breaking their way through the overgrown bushes, surrounded old training grounds. The voices of the guards sounded much closer, this time accompanied by a familiar imperious voice which gave the orders not caring for being heard. Notes of the commanding voice made Rishka think the speaking one was extremely displeased with what the evening occasionally turned into while it hadn't even came to its most interesting part – flattering the lady of the manor and intriguing against everyone else.

Rishka stood up, and Vallen followed. They lingered over the squabby hedge on the border of the training ground field, and Rishka felt no protection of the Force left around them. The sounds and smells of the night alleys, fruit trees and flowers all came back, even more vivid and clear than before the escape. Rishka helplessly looked at Valen for explanation, but she saw him as surprised as she was.

“The cocoon... it disappeared,” Valen frowned, clenched his teeth, trying to cast it once again, but it just didn't work that way. He was too tired to make the protection as strong as it was for the first time, and just wasted his time trying.

“You devastated yourself, you can't do it twice a night,” Rishka grabbed Valen's collar and, having doubted a little, kissed him on the lips, and on the cheeks, and on the eyes and eyebrows in the end just to found her lips where they belonged – on his lips again. “Now – go,” Rishka pushed Valen's away harshly, but he wrangled, “Not without you.”

“If I disappear, my mother will alert all the Imperial Intelligence Service, all the soldiers, and Mandalorians she has just to find me,” Rishka raised her voice. “Go! Can't you hear the akks? If mother tells Carid to work on you, he will tear you to pieces alive!”

“I am not afraid of this Concord Dawn scum,” Valen responded haughtily. As akk dogs' rough breathing resonated nearby, and the voices of the guards became low and harsh as they knew the akks found the track, glimpses of fear appearing in Valen's eyes told Rishka different.

“Go, please,” Rishka kissed Valen once again and pushed him harder, “go!”

When akks came running the training grounds through the crashed hedge maze, howling and snarling like mad, Valen jumped on the wall in a long, impossible move he made by just springing up on his toes. Rishka helped Valen to complete the jump successfully with the Force and wanted to breathe out with relief, but Valen was beaten off the wall by a punch of a heavy-metal plated boot. Carid returned from Nal Hutta earlier than Rishka thought, and it was Carid who pushed unconscious Valen on the ground, Valen's lekku dangling like dead worms.

Rishka threw herself on Valen, covering him with her body to protect from akks' claws and jaws as the dogs were trained to never hurt the daughter of the mistress, and even Carid was unable to unclench her arms. It took both Carid and mother bodyguard, Zabrak Breraa, to uncouple Rishka and Valen and to drag Rishka aside. They made it seconds before Lady Durga appeared, her face full of vigorous disappointment and denuded Rishka of her hope to sway on the guards' minds with the Force though she perfectly knew they were trained to resist it.

“If you kill him, I'll kill myself,” threatened Rishka, as she saw her mother. “There will be no Darth in the family.”

“That's fine,” responded Lady Durga coldly, making knelt Rishka stand up with a quick little move of her fingers. Rishka felt like picked up by the hand of the Force itself, and carelessly thrust onto the ground. “You know there are a lot of methods of leaving alive, but making regret of living?”

Blood rushed to Rishka's naturally red face, she heard the blood hammering in her ears, but repeated strictly, “You heard me well. If you do him harm, I will...”

“Now silent,” demanded Lady Durga, turning to Carid while trifling her gloves. “I won't kill him as this time you at least represented your wishes clearly. But you will never see this disgusting little creature again.”

“How I'll know you kept the word then?” asked Rishka persistently. Lady Durga turned back quickly, squeezing Rishka's cheeks, “By remembering you are not the one making the conditions to me. Every Sith Lady has her little whims, but your whim made a fool of me in public. You are taking my word and going to Korriban to wait for your uncle there with the next shuttle I send, never asking me of your Twi'lek pet again, or his death will be so terrible you will sense it on another side of the Galaxy. Did you understand me, child?”

“Yes, mother,” Rishka mumbled with her lips flattened, she needn't tempt the patience of Lady Durga any longer as it might have appeared extremely short. Rishka walked away by her mother's side, and Carid commanded the guards to take Valen to the basement. Rishka forced herself not to look at Valen while they dragged him and his lekku swept the hard-packed ground. Through the ground timid grass grew, as an example of the power of life breaking through any kind of steady strictness, but Risha didn't find it either a philosophical pattern or a Force prompt.

It was the time for Rishka to keep quiet and obey. Two days later, when mother's second representative shuttle was laid to Korriban, Rishka came aboard with a little pack of her belongings she could need in the sacred world of the Sith, lightsaber at her waist. Mother, of course, came to see Rishka off; as her shuttle departed from Kass City spaceport hangar, Lady Durga needed everyone to see that no pitiful slave could stand between her and her daughter, ladies of true Sith Bloodline that never contained more than a single drop of the human one. 

Not a single world of Valen's fate came from Lady Durga's lips when she counseled Rishka dry on her further actions and expressed hope that Rishka would make Korriban trainers and Lords-teachers remember her name as well as the name of her Bloodline, as it was a great honor for the whole Academy to train a Trueblood lady while her glorious uncle and future teacher was still being busy on Quesh. Rishka knew Valen was still alive, she sensed his presence in Force, though faint and fading away, he was obviously alive. That made Rishka nod and ask no questions.

Rishka chose to be calm and quiet, self-composure was valued high among the Pureblood Sith of elder generation. It would be easier for Rishka to arrive on Korriban looking all concerned with the Sorcery to avoid sharing acolytes' life as she felt no interest in dueling, which was absolutely forbidden by Empire laws, but assiduously promoted in less formal atmosphere. On the one hand, being calm and quiet helped Rishka to keep all her fear, pain and desperation away from everyday life in which Rishka needed to look best, and on the other because of Rishka needed to think, and to think a lot, as, according to Valen's advice, she found a very old codex, handwritten one, in the manor's library, and was going to study it inly.

Codex contained several studies of the Revanchist Heresy. Lords and Ladies, swayed bu it, allied with Revan herself and tried to depose the Emperor, enlisted support of Lord Scourge. Lord Scourge lied to Revan and his allies as he remained loyal to the Empire and took the rebels to Emperor just to get them killed one by one. Authoress of the Codex, Lady Sighil, was one of Rishka's grandmothers, and she assured that amongst Revan's allies were the Sith but Lord Scourge, and one of them was Lady Sighil's cousin.

Lady Sighil wrote down what she called the “Teachings of Revan”, as she learned then from her cousin, with whom she was very close, and complemented them with her reflections on the nature of Force and inevitability of choice between Light and Dark sides, which in the end didn't seem to Lady Sighil so inevitable.

Lady Sighil considered that there was no Light and no Dark Side, as it was found and experienced by Revan, who was a Jedi, turned into a Sith after Mandalorian Wars. In the end of her life, Revan confessed that she chose no side though in her latest years she was forced to reunite with Jedi Order. Due to Revan's analysis, Jedi used to deny their feelings and Sith made the cult of their passions. They both extolled what helped them to cope with the power they accidentally get from the Universe, which was also the Force, as the Force was everything, and everything was the Force.

Lady Sighil underlined the thesis as she found it crucial for her reflections, and came back to it several times further. Rishka read the last of the Codex with interest, but in her heart she knew she needn't read more: all she needed she got from these brief lines. There was no Light and no Darkness, just the Force, thus Rishka's disturbance was caused not by she was a bad Sith or a treacherous Jedi, it was caused by she could hardly stand the restrictions the Dark Side imposed.

It was hard to confess it, but still easier than suggest that Rishka was inclined to the Light Side, and, as Rishka supposed, closer to the truth. Rishka didn't fit Sith society and didn't feel like she would fit there someday. Pureblood Sith, Imperial functionals and nobles Lady Durga used to invite in manor wore Rishka down, she found them narrow-minded and far too conservative, but on Korriban things were much worse. Younger Sith were even more eager to play the Imperial games than the older ones, Academy life was all about power, Force and glory – this atmosphere sucked life out of Rishka faster than lack of Valen she felt did.

Valenless life was aching. Rishka felt pain every time she thought of him: she felt pain in the garden knowing Valen would never manage to escape from Carid's hands, and the time didn't cure it. Rishka was left alone in the land of sand and sullen sky-scraping tombs, and her soul ached all over. She felt Valen suffering, him feeling pain, his anger, his grievance, his despair, but she could do nothing to help him. Every Rishka's move was carefully watched by Lady Durga's men, and even if she tried to help, it would get much worse for Valen... and for her mother.

Rishka knew Durga wouldn't let her in the manor and walk out with Valen easily. She would try to kill Valen just to teach Rishka discipline, denying the fact Rishka needn't teaching. Lady Durga saw only Rishka disobedience and persistence in desire to get what she wanted, she didn't see Rishka's true reason; didn't wanted to. Rishka would say it to Durga's face and saw mother laughing in response: impossible, a Pureblood woman couldn't love a slave.

Lady Durga believed that Rishka wanted Valen to live just to show her mother that it was Rishka who was making the conditions. For Durga, the whole affair was the question of the authority. Lady Durga knew that Rishka was in the age Sith used to try their temper on the members of the Bloodline and was ready to push her back. And if Rishka was pushed back by Lady Durga while on the stake was Valen's life, as Lady Durga never played for the less, Rishka would go to the end of it, and for the Sith the end always meant death: the death of Valen or the death of Lady Durga, both of them Rishka never wanted.

Days passed, Valen felt worse. Rishka knew it and tried to distract herself, but it was unbearable to sense Valen as though he was somewhere on the planet, knowing that in point of fact he was thousands parsecs away. Rishka knew that no matter how close she sensed him, she would never reach him, touch him, kiss him again; never knew he was safe and free. Something happened to him, not tortures, but very close to it: a hard, exhausting job, leading to attrition and early death. So that's what Rishka mother talked about, letting live and making regret, thought Rishka bitterly. Lady Durga finally found a way to destroy Valen, to destroy both Valen and Rishka, and succeeded.

Valen suffered for weeks, Rishka felt phantom pain in all her body, and especially in arms, bloodshot stripes appeared on her wrists in the morning to disappear in the noon. They made Valen work in chains, dragging the stones, digging the ground, quarrying the rocks. Anything of the kind was a certain death for a manor slave, swell butler with a smile which stole hearts easier than his hands stashed away pastry from the kitchen and small money left after shopping for the mistress. Rishka lied on the bed, her mind wandering the paths of the Force, piercing the Galaxy, but she couldn't find Valen on Dromund Kaas, she couldn't find him anywhere in Horuset Systems, either on the moons or asteroid bases there was no Valen, and the search overpowered her. 

The morning Rishka woke up not feeling Valen anymore she knew he was dead. This hit her like the Emperor's Wrath, and from the moment Rishka was awake, fully realizing what happened while she slept, she knew her life ended with Valen's. Mother lied like all the Sith did to keep Valen in chains of metal and Rishka in chains of mind, apart, so far from each other, just to die in different worlds. Maybe if Rishka was a real Sith she would go to Dromund Kass and kill Lady Durga for the betrayal, but Rishka loved her mother, and, understanding how poisonous and unhealthy this love was, knew her mother loved her.

Rishka knew she would be able to kill Durga if Durga stood between Rishka and Valen, demanding Rishka to destroy what her heart longed, but in this case, Rishka was sure that Durga would leave her no choice but to kill or to yield. Rishka could possibly kill her mother in the heat of passion, she was a Pureblood, after all, but to plan coldly, to arrive in the shadow of the night to mercilessly and secretly spread revenge... No, Rishka was incapable of that, and Durga knew it. Still there was a promise Rishka gave her, and it was the time to keep it.

Rishka absentmindedly brushed her hair, put her clothes on and walked out of the room, throwing her large dust cloak on the black mirror opposite to the windowless wall of her chamber. She walked out the acolytes' housing, the so-called “Trueblood Level”, reserved for the noble Sith novices, indifferently greeted tutors she met on her way down the hall. They might consider Rishka haughty, but haughtiness was a perfect mask for the never-ending grief she bore under her heart like a child, and this child grew, squeezing Rishka's hand in his little dead hand.

Went out the Academy building, Rishka walked down the numerous steps of the staircase leading down the valley. She heard students speaking of Lady Zash's new disciple she in Dungeon works, and all the fuss her decision teaching him made, as her disciple was a slave. It was astonishing news, though sometimes Force-sensitive slaves were chosen to be sent to Korriban, it wasn't that kind easy to find a master for an acolyte with no influential friends and no protection at all, especially if there was a serious competition for the position of the pupil of the promising Lord or Lady, and, as Rishka knew, Lady Zash was just the type.

Rishka's life was coming to an end, but still she was listening to the acolytes' talk, looked into the heated Korriban sky and felt the rays of its furious suns stinging her skin. There was never so much sun at a time on Dromund Kaas, Rishka still suffered from the climate changes she experienced. Thinking about it, Rishka felt a fit of sudden annoyance, as she remembered that she had forgotten the gloves. Next moment she would laugh about it if only she was able to: she walked out of her room to die, and still was irritated with the heat and ravenous suns, weather and clothes inconvenient for such heat as well.

There was a man in black clothing at the end of the staircase, he stood in Rishka's way and obviously was not going to make a step aside to let her pass through. An acolyte dreaming of dueling a Pureblood or a haughty Lord, titled a few days ago and eager to show everyone and everything he was so great he needn't be polite? Rishka considered duel a quicker way to end the suffering, but she wasn't sure it would be she who lose, as she was in a mood to die, as, according to Carid's mandalorian beliefs, the one who was ready to die never really died in the end.

Rishka was still thinking when she pushed the man with her shoulder, and he grabbed her hand, pulling Rishka closer. Rishka saw Imperial Commandos coming from the landing platform, their guns down, their bodies speaking of gentle eagerness to end the Sith fight in the most polite but decisive manner and advice the fighters to try their powers in a little more distant playground.

“What are you doing?” asked Rishka, rising her eyes wearily. “Are you searching for a fight?”

“No,” Valem smiled tenderly. New scars appeared on his face crossing the lips, pink on the red skin between the dark marks, so painfully recent, so new, so unfamiliar to Rishka. “I am searching for you.”

“Is what... is what really you?” Rishka breathed out, touching his cheek with her numb blind fingers. His skin was still smooth except on the left cheek, there it was more like emery. When Rishka touched it, Valen frowned slightly and hold her hand, as though it hurt to feel her fingers. “Valen...”

“It is me,” Valen took a step up the staircase, pulling Rishka's hand. “Follow me and don't question, soldiers are starting to look ner-vo-us, also I am not sure we are not being listened... This place is a jar full of spiders and snakes, even worse than Kaas City servants' room. This I understand, if I had a lightsaber when I was ten, no one would be left alive, and those skunks had it since birth...”

Rishka listened to Valen, trying to keep up with him and look concerned with dialogue, nodding from time to time to avoid suspicions. Valen repeated the name of his mistress, Lady Zash – by the Force, was it him who the acolytes talked about, her new pupil? – but Valen let Rishka understand that she shouldn't ask for the details and try to interrupt him with questions. It was easy enough, Rishka felt like dream walking as she held her beloved dead's quite warm hand and listened to his slightly hoarse voice sounded like torn a few days ago, and recently started recovering.

To get access to “Trueblood Level” Valen used Lady Zash name once again with shameless self-confidence. His new mistress seemed to be a Korriban authority, Rishka was pretty sure she heard the name before, maybe mother mentioned it from time to time, but for Lady Durga most of the Lords and Ladies were considered uninteresting: too small fishes to draw her attention, but Korriban regularity differed from the Dromund Kaas ones as the Academy was the whole another world with its own rulers and orders. 

Valen dragged Rishka into her room when she unblocked the lock as she started to falling into his arms. Rishka was astonished by how skinny Valen became, as though he consisted of angles, and sharp corners, and joints only, moved his body parts with dry dehydrated clicks. Valen's fingers looked more like claws of an ill bird, he lacked several teeth but gained numerous scars. When Rishka looked into his eyes, she didn't see its carefree blueness anymore, Valen's eyes were furious like Korriban heated sky, and Rishka was helpless to change it, to love the pain away from him, as it became a part of him – his Descending.

“Mine,” Valen's smile was faint but imperceptibly predatory. He ran his fingers on Rishka's face. “Mine”, he repeated with aspiration, his moves uncertainly bound as if he wasn't sure that his emaciated body wouldn't fail him later.

“Yours, And you are mine,” answered Rishka, her breath clasped. Valen was so twisted it hurt even to look at him. What did they make him to pass through, what did they do to him that made him look like that? Even a shadow of himself, his eyes gleamed with passionate, furious hope, the blinks of which Rishka saw in every acolyte's eyes she ever met here: a hope of becoming more than just a Sith, a hope of greatness.

“You are a Sith now, are you?” she whispered into Valen's ear, enfolding him with her arms. Valen pressed her to the wall with all the strength his devastated body could bear, for half a corpse it was immense. Rishka suffocated, but Valen rushed back eagerly like a tiding wave just to return, pressing Rishka to the wall once again, twice as long and better as the darkest impulse of the Force.

“Now how it is changing the price of the fish?” Valen whispered back jauntily. “I don't care how they call me, they will never call me slave again – never ever again in all my damned life.”

“Where you've been? How you survived?” questions flew out Rishka's lips but in response, she got nothing but hot, rough kisses, Valen's crannied lips scratched her skin. 

“I didn't survive,” Valen laughed as though Rishka said something extremely funny. “I died, but lived again. Isn't it exciting how one can screw the death and mess with his masters? Your mother told Carid to whip the life out of me and sell me to the worst slavers he could find. So he did, for me – it made no difference: they took me here, sent me to the Archolochy Corps.”

“Archeology,” Rishka corrected Valen mechanically, but he didn't pay attention, continuing, “I dug, and I was beaten, and half-eaten and poisoned by shirak, and I was sent to scout newly opened tombs to get all the ancient curses cast on me only instead of the Lord-in-charge. When I refused. they got me locked in an iron box in the desert where all the rebellious slaves went. Nobody walked out of it alive, nobody, and after – a few days, a week? - I exploded that thing from the inside. I was free.”

'If you were on Korriban, why didn't I feel you?” asked Rishka helplessly, even more than with Valen's story shocked by the fact how close to her he actually was all that time, and she didn't even know that – she didn't even know he was on the same planet, and if she just walked out of the room and went down to the tombs, she could meet him, help him, save him. Overcame by grief, Rishka saw no suns and moons but Lady Sighil's book and her pain. She moaned of her sorrowful destiny, but all that time she was able to change it – why didn't she even try?

“Your mother put an inhibitor on me. It did... something. I called to you, but you never answered. You never heard me,” Valen pinned Rishka to the wall with a look of rancor. “Maybe you just didn't want to. Or didn't want it at all.”

Valen was ready to hate Rishka, he really did. She saw the hatred in his eyes, but she didn't want to hate him back for what he said to her though she suffered every single moment without him, away from him. Rishka's heart was no iron, no stone and no crystal of pure power of the Dark Side; her heart was soft and weak, and nothing could ever improve that. Born to the Sith Bloodline, Rishka was no Sith, and she started to cry like no Sith would, silently but woefully. She had no power to resist Valen's hate, but she loved him the most, even though he blamed her more than he missed her.

Valen stood and watched Rishka crying. He didn't try to say something or to comfort her, because that was how a true Sith should act like. Pain made him stronger, and, as he believed, finally set him free, power he unleashed made him happier – the coldness, the cruelty, the indifference for anything but him made Valen a Sith, and Rishka accepted that. She cried as she accepted Sith in Valen and denied Sith in herself, she cried for a Sith she would never be and he became in several weeks, she cried for all her life went so wrong just because she was born an Empire Pureblood, and while she cried, she felt her pain ceasing. 

Rishka stopped crying in short little sobs. She felt relief. She finally saw the things clear and was grateful for she'd been through just for making her see, at last, see... At last, see Valen's hand, wiping tears from her cheek.

“If I never met you,” he said, “I wouldn't hate you and your mother altogether. But if never met you, I would never know what a true passion means. What are you doing here, my love? You are no Sith. But there is still a place for the things like you.”

“I know,” Rishka nodded. She knew what Valen was talking about. “But they would kill me if I...”

“If they catch you. And as for the other ones – they'll listen to you, at least.”

There was the difference between the Sith and the Jedi Rishka used to know. But it seemed like she had forgotten it, just like she'd forgotten all she was taught to.

***

If you like this work, you may also like my original ones: http://archiveofourown.org/series/375284


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